Rowan (6 page)

“Thanks for the loaner.” She pulled Tristan’s sweater off and handed it to him. “I think my boobs are sufficiently dry now.” She fanned her flushed face. “Actually, I think they’re cooked. I was roasting all period.”

“And I was freezing.” Tristan gratefully put his sweater back on with a shiver. “Mr. Carn always keeps his room so damn cold.”

“The half-dissected cats like it better that way.”

“You’re just lucky I love you.”

“Yeah, right. You just didn’t want me flashing the whole room!” Lily exclaimed a bit too loudly.

She watched Tristan grab his stuff and hurry out of the room, not even thinking twice about his choice of words. He said he loved her every now and again. It didn’t mean the same thing to him as it did to her, and Lily knew it. But she also knew that he did care deeply about her, which made the situation all the more confusing. Since their steamy episode on the couch, Tristan hadn’t tried anything sexier than a few chaste kisses and a lot of hand-holding. He loved her—Lily had known that for years—but he just didn’t seem to be all the crazy about her body.

Not that she had a bad body, Lily thought as she grabbed a sip from the bubbler and then followed Tristan to their side-by-side lockers. Sure, she had skin that was much too fair for the current style and she was painfully skinny, but even she was aware of the fact that she had a great face. Well, Lily conceded, she had a great face when it wasn’t leaking snot or covered in hives, which wasn’t very often. And the hair was a problem. Bright red, thicker than polar bear fur and curly as scissor-skinned ribbons on a birthday present, Lily’s hair was a force to be reckoned with. She wouldn’t be surprised if it could be seen from space, and she spent most of her time pinning it back, pulling it up, and generally trying to convince it not to eat her face.

Lily hated her hair, probably because it reminded her so much of her mother’s. Her big sister, Juliet, had pin-straight locks in a perfectly respectable shade of brown, but not Lily. Oh, no. On top of having to wear a battalion of medic-alert bracelets that proclaimed her freakiness to the world, Lily had also been saddled with her mom’s crazy hair.

Lily fervently hoped she hadn’t gotten her mom’s crazy mind to go with it.

“Are you sure you want to go to your last class?” Tristan asked skeptically as he watched Lily pull her Spanish textbook out of her locker. “I could get a pass and drive you home right now,” he offered.

“What for?” Lily said brightly.

Tristan straightened to his full height of six foot two and turned toward her. He reached out with one of his long, supple arms and boxed her in against the wall of lockers. She went still and looked up at him. Tristan was one of those rare guys whose skin always managed to look dewy and fresh, like every inch of him was utterly kissable.

“No jokes. No acting tough,” he said, easing closer to her until his thighs rested on hers. Tristan brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You don’t have to come with me to the party tonight.”

Lily frowned. If he thought she was so sick, why would he go to the party without her? She was about to ask him when a shrill voice interrupted them.

“Are you
serious
?”

Lily and Tristan broke apart and turned to see Miranda Clark staring at them, her hands planted on her shapely hips and an exaggerated look of disgust on her spray-tanned face. Half the hallway full of students slowed to gawk.

“What, Miranda? You got something to say?” Tristan said rudely.

“Yeah, I got something to say,” Miranda retorted, her lower lip trembling.

Lily felt bad for her. Under all that lip gloss and chemically treated blonde hair, it was easy to see that she was hurt. Tristan didn’t talk about his love life with Lily, but she was pretty sure that Miranda and he had been involved a few weeks back. Lily wasn’t sure exactly when they’d stopped seeing each other, but from the stunned look on Miranda’s face, Lily guessed that it had been recently. Maybe too recently.

“This should be great,” Tristan said, crossing his arms and smirking. “Remember to use your big-girl words, Miranda.”

Lily gaped at Tristan, surprised at how cruel he was being. True, Miranda Clark wasn’t the smartest girl in school, but she was two years younger than they were. Of course her vocabulary wouldn’t be on the same level as theirs. What was he doing hooking up with a fifteen-year-old to begin with? The whole episode was leaving a bad taste in Lily’s mouth.

“Miranda. I’m sorry you’re upset, but maybe we should talk about this later?” Lily said. Miranda didn’t appreciate Lily’s peace offering. In fact, she looked like she was just about to pounce on Lily and beat the crap out of her.

“This isn’t your mess, Lily,” Tristan said tiredly. “Go to Spanish. I’ll handle her.”

“Mess?” Miranda said, focusing her rage on him. “You think I’m a
mess
?” she repeated, her tone sliding up an octave.

The bell rang, breaking up the knot of bystanders, but Miranda didn’t move. She waited, eyes bright with furious tears, for Tristan to deal with her.

“Go,” Tristan repeated to Lily. “I got this.”

Lily turned and went to her class. Behind her, she could hear the two of them arguing. The volume rose steadily until Lily could catch the last retort from all the way down the hall.

“Whatever, Miranda,” Tristan said. “I honestly don’t care about what you think.” Then Lily—and half the student body—heard Miranda slap Tristan across the face.

Lily ducked into her classroom rather than go back and defend Tristan as she might have a few days ago. This wasn’t the first time a girl had slapped her best friend, but it was the first time Lily believed he’d really deserved it.

After school, Lily felt a bit strange getting a ride home from Tristan as she usually did. Having no other option, she waited in the parking lot by his car and grimaced when she saw the hassled look on his face as he came toward to her.

“I could have my mom…” Lily began halfheartedly.

“Your mom? Driving? Like I want innocent blood on my hands,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“She’d never make it out of the driveway, anyways,” Lily said dryly. “The garage confuses her.”

Tristan unlocked the doors on the Chevy Volt that he kept immaculate for Lily, and they both got in.

“Sorry about today,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to drag you into it.”

“That was some slap. How’s your face?”

He sighed dramatically. “Unfortunately, the nurse said that slap was loaded with cooties.”

Lily sucked in a pained breath. “Cooties. You know what that means?”

“They’ll have to amputate.”

“Girls across the tri-state area will be inconsolable. A national day of mourning is sure to follow.”

He smiled at her lazily, his mouth inches away, eyes locked with hers. Lily desperately wanted to forget the whole thing and kiss his cootie-infested face, but something held her back.

“How’s Miranda?” Lily asked, looking down at her hands.

“How should I know?” Tristan turned back to the steering wheel and started the car. His coldness toward Miranda disturbed her. Was this how Tristan treated every girl he was finished with?

“Do you want me to talk to her?” Lily offered. “I can tell her it was unexpected. That she’s got the wrong idea about us and what happened.”

“Miranda has so many wrong ideas in her head I don’t see how setting her straight about one of them will make any difference. She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, Lily.” Tristan glanced at the look on Lily’s face while he drove out of the parking lot and knew what she was thinking. “I know, I know,” he said with exasperation. “If I think she’s an idiot, I probably shouldn’t have fooled around with her in the first place, right?”

“She’s a lot younger than us, Tristan. Two years is a big deal,” Lily objected gently.

“I guess.” He sighed. “But trust me, Lily. Miranda’s not some innocent little girl. I didn’t, you know, ruin her or anything.”

“Ruin her? What century is this?” Lily chuckled. Tristan’s lips turned up in a tiny smile. Lily took a second to steel herself for the next question. “Were you still involved with Miranda the other night?”

He rolled his eyes. “She wasn’t my girlfriend. I never made any promises to her, and it was idiotic of her to think we were going to be a couple.”

They drove in silence for a bit.

“Just out of curiosity, how would a girl know if you
were
going to be a couple?” Lily was reaching—fishing for a commitment from him like she was one of his desperate admirers. She disliked herself for it, and as the silence stretched out, her question hanging like a bad smell in the air, she started to dislike him for not answering her. They pulled into Lily’s driveway, Tristan’s face never even twitching to show that he’d registered what she’d said.

“I’ll pick you up at seven for the party,” he said, then drove off.

Lily stood outside in the cold sea air after Tristan left. She liked the cold. She especially liked the clean, salty air that blew in off the Atlantic Ocean, which was pounding away at the rocky shore just a few blocks from her house. Cold, damp air cleared her head and soothed her skin. Luckily for Lily, growing up in Salem meant that there had always been plenty of blustery winds off the water.

When she was comfortable and cool, Lily turned and went inside the ancient Colonial house that had been in her family since the Pilgrims had landed. Literally. Lily’s parents, Samantha and James Proctor, could trace their families back to the
Mayflower
, and both of them had family members who had either lived in Salem or the surrounding Essex County since there was such a thing as an Essex County on this continent. Sometimes Lily wondered if her raging allergies were from inbreeding, but her sister told her that was ridiculous. Tristan’s family, the Coreys, had been in Salem just as long as the Proctors had, and there was certainly nothing inbred about Tristan.

Lily put her stuff down on the kitchen table and listened to the house for a moment. “Mom?” she called, when she decided it sounded empty.

“Is that you, Lillian?” Only Samantha, Lily’s mom, called her by her full name.

“Yeah, it’s me. Where are you?” Lily wandered toward her mother’s voice, confused. It sounded like she was out in the garage.

“Ah, Mom. Look at this mess,” Lily exclaimed when she saw what her mother was up to out there.

Samantha sat at her old potter’s wheel, her curly red hair sticking out wildly, throwing clay in her pajamas and robe. She was in the spot where Lily’s dad parked his car, but she hadn’t put a tarp down underneath her. The floor was covered in drippings that were already beginning to harden. They’d have to be chipped off, but that was only half the problem. In the parking spot next to that, her mom’s old Jeep Grand Cherokee was splattered with clay. Lily dug her hands into her hair, surveying the disaster.

“There she is—no bumps or bruises! I almost came to get you at school,” Samantha said in chipper way. She only garbled her words a little, and that concerned Lily. The meds made her slur, and the slightly clearer speech could mean that she hadn’t taken all of them today. “But when I didn’t get the phone call from your principal, I knew that my Lillian wasn’t the one that trashy girl had attacked in the hallway. See? That’s how I knew the difference between what happened
here
and what happened
elsewhere
.”

Lily tried and failed to work out her mom’s logic.

“And then I saw my wheel!” Samantha continued happily. “And I wondered, why did I ever stop throwing pots?”

Lily looked at the watered-down lump of poorly mixed clay in her mother’s shaky hands and couldn’t think of a way to say the phrase
you lost your mind and the meds destroyed your talent
so it didn’t sound cruel.

It hadn’t escaped Lily’s notice that before she’d gone to Spanish, Miranda had looked like she’d wanted to attack her but had settled for Tristan instead. Yet, according to her mother, the fight
had
happened. Elsewhere. The new medication obviously wasn’t strong enough. If her mother was underdosed, things could get ugly. She’d need help.

“Hey, Mom? Aren’t you cold?” she asked brightly. Samantha nodded, like it had just occurred to her that she was. “Why don’t you go inside, and I’ll finish up out here for you.”

“Thank you, dear,” Samantha said placidly. She slid out of her dirty Crocs and took off her ruined robe, handing it to Lily.

“I’m going to take you upstairs, tuck you in, and then make a few phone calls, okay?” Lily said carefully. When her mom got confused like this Lily knew the best way to keep her calm was to be as clear as possible.

“Yes, call your sister and tell her exactly what happened,” Samantha said. Her face suddenly got serious and she grasped Lily’s hands with her clay-covered ones. “There isn’t a Juliet who doesn’t love you,” she said desperately. “Remember that.”

“Sure, Mom,” Lily said, smiling brightly as she pried her fingers free. “Let’s get cleaned up, okay?”

Samantha nodded and shuffled inside. Lily pulled out her cell phone and called her dad, just in case he decided to answer. When she was shunted to voicemail after two rings, Lily didn’t even bother to leave a message. He was obviously avoiding the call and probably wouldn’t check his inbox for hours. She speed-dialed her big sister, Juliet, instead.

“What’s wrong?” came Juliet’s immediate response.

“Mom’s having a bad day,” Lily said, not at all surprised that her sister already knew something was out of place. The two sisters often joked that their phones were so used to making emergency calls that they had somehow learned how to ring more urgently when there was trouble. Lily walked over to the refrigerator and checked her mom’s meds.

“Did she get loose again?” Juliet asked.

“No,” Lily replied thankfully as she counted her mom’s pills. “She just decided to make a few pots. But she neglected to take the car out of the garage first.”

“Fantastic.” Juliet paused. She and Lily started laughing at the same time. “How bad is it?”

“Oh, it’s pretty impressive, Jules.” Lily finished counting the pills. “I just checked, and she took all her meds today, so we’ll have to talk to the doctors about her dosage again. I can clean up the mess myself, but I’m worried about leaving her alone tonight. And I have this thing.”